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Transport\Capital ship rebalance idea - Printable Version

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Transport\Capital ship rebalance idea - Curios - 12-25-2013

* Curios wears his fireproof suit

Okay, now ,when I'm set for this discussion, let's get down to business.

The problem of capital ships\transports to small craft balance in battle is that they have an enormous amount of bots and bats. Sharing those can keep the snubs alive for ages creating a bad experience for the opposite side.

So my suggestion is to:

1. Only carriers will have bots left to share in battle. Reduce their storage capacities of those to:

1.1 Heavy Carrier - 200 bots
1.2 Light Carrier - 150 bots

Thus it won't make difference for capital ship if he'll use repairs on himself but will give fighters some spare, yet not unlimited, supply of regens.

2. Leave shield batteries in lesser quantities for all capital ships and transports. Amount of those is to be calculated by the following rule: amount of bots stored must be exactly enough to fully regenerate the biggest available shield on that class of ship. That mean that battleship must have batteries to fully regen battleship shield once. Transport must have batteries to regen the heavy transport shield once.

3. Improve base armoring for capital ships. Base armor is to be improved to compensate the lack of nanos.

Example: Osiris. Currently it have some 750 000 or so armor (accurate or not - doesn't matter, it's example). So make it to have 1.800.000 points of armor instead.

4. Reduce the agility of all mentioned ships (small transports, med transports, battle transports, liners, gunboats\gunships, cruisers, destroyers, battlecruisers, battleships, dreadnoughts, carriers, light carriers)

Also the speed must be altered as well because we can and it's a trend.

I'll try to list class speeds from fastest to slowest here, from my pov.

4.1. Small transport and gunships - fastest ship, it's cargo space isn't great (below 1500) but it buys out by speed. Gunships are also here because of their agility, limited armor and firepower being sacrificed to speed them up.

4.2. Medium transports and gunboats - it's middle sized transports with some armoring to prevent unexpected vacuum ventilation, moderate cargo holds. However this goes in price of speed. Gunboats are also falling into that category - they can't match up to gunships in their speed but it's traded out for firepower and armor.

4.3. Heavy transports (4000-5000 cargo). The mastodons of commerce - huge cargo holds are taking everything from this ship. Thus it lacks in firepower, agility and speed. Also their important parts are well-armored making them even slower. Heavy transport have the same speed as Destroyer class and the lightest of cruisers. Destroyers and light cruisers are lighter then usual cruisers and thus able to go as fast as heavy transports while their firepower is not great comparing to their bigger brothers.

4.4. Cruisers, Liners - those vessels are specially designed for war, their armor, weapons and defenses are well balanced for combat environment. However the war doesn't include the hunt after the transports so their speed doesn't go on par with those. Liners also falling into that category - their inner spaces are filled with more then just container storage but a full infrastructure for it's passengers. Liners are heavily armored but yet can transport only human cargo (when it's implemented).

4.5. Light Carrier (on cruiser chassis), Battlecruiser

The heavy ships that trade in agility and speed in exchange for extra abilities or additional firepower.

4.6. Light battleships, Light carriers (light battleship chassis) - light battleships\carriers, not designed for open combat with heavy brothers, however it can avoid fight using it's lesser weight and smaller size to get a tactical advantage. Have additional slots for special equipment.

4.7. Medium battleship - the main striking force of the Military. The balance of cheaper design, firepower and armoring makes them into perfect front line combat vessels. Medium battleship is faster then heavy battleship, however lacks in abilities to install special equipment)

4.8. Heavy battleships, Dreadnoughts - the iron first the any general would like to have under his command. Excessively armored, armed and able to install waste variety of extra equipment. However this makes this class of ships to be very vulnerable because of their slow speed and poor agility. This class is used to strike on enemy lines head to head.

5. Capital armor upgrades must be divided once and forever. Universal armor upgrades should be only mountable to small ships from LF to freighter. Heavy and Capital upgrades must be only available for transports and above. Those armors shouldn't be crossing their ways. This way their armor multiplier can be used as a balance factor. With the armoring I mentioned i'll be not wise to leave capital armor upgrades with same mults as it is now - so they need to be separated from the basic fighter armors and their mult reduced.

Discuss, opinions, flame

* Curios yells "fire away"

RE: Transport\Capital ship rebalance idea - Knjaz - 12-25-2013

When did you die in a Cau8 Turtle with full bots in 14 seconds, last time? or in 20, if the enemy is not that numerous, but is still practicing focus fire.
If you're so concerned about bot trading in snub fights or bot trading between capitals and snubs - then, please, fix it the way that doesn't screw other ship classes in large scale combat.

Like the battleship class rebalance idea - but to balance it around different combat efficiency based on BS class, you'll likely need to implement additional factor in form of death penalties or maintenance costs. (unavoidable ones.)

RE: Transport\Capital ship rebalance idea - Curios - 12-25-2013

(12-25-2013, 11:55 AM)Knjaz Wrote: When did you die in a Cau8 Turtle with full bots in 14 seconds, last time? or in 20, if the enemy is not that numerous, but is still practicing focus fire.
If you're so concerned about bot trading in snub fights or bot trading between capitals and snubs - then, please, fix it the way that doesn't screw other ship classes in large scale combat.

Like the battleship class rebalance idea - but to balance it around different combat efficiency based on BS class, you'll likely need to implement additional factor in form of death penalties or maintenance costs. (unavoidable ones.)

Honestly I'm not getting what you're trying to tell so can you please elaborate it.

RE: Transport\Capital ship rebalance idea - Govedo13 - 12-25-2013

He is saying that in lets say 5 vs 5 caps fight bots are really important since the better organized group can feed their whole amount on hp(bots and bats) to the targeted by the enemy ship in order to keep steady their group DPS.
The group DPS would fall down by 20% if the group does not feed the targeted ship.

For me the solution is to add the repair guns that were discussed in the other topic made by Blodo.

On all other points I do agree with you.

RE: Transport\Capital ship rebalance idea - Knjaz - 12-25-2013

(12-25-2013, 12:12 PM)Curios Wrote: Honestly I'm not getting what you're trying to tell so can you please elaborate it.

In short - bot/bat trading between capitals in medium-large scale combat (3-7 or more battleships from both sides) is what promotes heavy teamwork, due to small windows of opportunity to trade those bots, gives battleships a chance to stay alive in the brawl and might even prolong the close-range brawl by few minutes.

The average lifespan of first focused Cau8 full bots/bats battleship in those close range brawls, during what I classify as large scale combat, is around 8-13 seconds. That's not nearly enough to get any fun of the fight, don't you think so? But luckily, that problem is negated when you have an actual team with you.

We've had instances of our flagship chewing through more than 10.000-12.000 nanobots in just 4-6 minute fight.


And all of that is a complete opposite of the snub brawls, where single battleship can support the fight to go on for tens of minutes. And while your suggested solution fixes snub problems, it makes battleship vs battleship combat in fleet engagements go even faster than it already does, and it also removes any chances of survival from the focused vessels, unless certain circumstances are met.

If anything - remove the bots/bats from snubs completely, by transferring their hull and shield points into ship stats.

P.S. bah, ninja'd Smile

RE: Transport\Capital ship rebalance idea - Curios - 12-25-2013

Okay.

Then what if there could be a possibility to make different types of bots\bats for snubs\capital ships? I don't think it's really possible in any way around.

But we're talking about close range brawls. Those are usually happen when the fleet is pretty much made out of only capships and go head on against same fleet. The problem of being not able to repair on fly might spark the interest to the ships that can intercept and recon? Who knows. Now you don't need those for most cases - because biggest ship have biggest DPM and biggest number of nanos and armor.

People wants variety - I'm trying to give it to them, preferably w\o ruining the snub craft pilots fun on the way. Because you see - bot feeds from capitals is a very very annoying scourge of good encounters since very long time here.

RE: Transport\Capital ship rebalance idea - Highland Laddie - 12-25-2013

I like the idea of reducing bot/batt amount on non-carriers, but I disagree on making transports slower or less maneuverable. Most 5kers are pretty clumsy as-is, and the agility of the medium and small transports is their only advantage, especially since they lack both the firepower and hull strength of their bigger brothers.

RE: Transport\Capital ship rebalance idea - Curios - 12-26-2013

I didn't mentioned how much it is to be changed. Some heavy transports are already very slow. However It's not about that mainly. It's about altering the stats so the steering work only on 1,5k ranges or more for little or med transports, gunboats, cruisers. I feel it's a bit odd that gunboat can jump around the capital ship at very close range and avoid fire almost completely. It's the result of aiming system calculations being not optimized for such type of movements from beginning and not exactly working properly. The main complaint for not being able to control the ship in turret view was about the controls itself - it was that if you concentrate on turrets you can't turn at all, only strafe side to side and upside down. Now the steering not only gives an ability to turn while in turret view - but more over, effectively evade fire on some ships almost at point blank while constantly firing own weapons. It's gave mechanics abuse and I don't know why it's still that way.

This, in my opinion, kinda pocking an eye to see two capital ships doing acrobatics around each others. Capitals, in my pov, must be more of a tactical weapon. Thus it needs to move like a capital ship - slowly, representing all it's heaviness, armor and might.

Same goes for transports - the biggest transport must be some kind of a barge. Very slow and risky to fly. A huge cargo space pays out for it. There is currently almost no factors that can make people buy smaller ship instead of bigger ship except blatant ID restrictions.

RE: Transport\Capital ship rebalance idea - Scumbag - 12-26-2013

(12-05-2013, 12:48 AM)Scumbag Wrote: Well at least the majority of people agree that battleships need a buff and that capitals should have a bigger death penalty.

I can post my thoughts here right?

I think battleships should work on the concept of area denial, it makes sense in rp because we have battleships posted in strategic places around the map. So they have to reach a long way with their guns and be deadly in that sphere. Both to other capitals and to snubs. Maybe use some missiles for snubs, bring back the razors for caps etc. But they should be slow, Barge kind of slow, with long cruise charge times.

Carriers should also have area denial but only against snubs, no real power against other capitals.

Cruisers/destroyers should do what their name says, move fast, engage capitals and destroy them. But they should be weak against snubs.

Battlecruisers should have some survivability against snubs and lose some atack power against capitals.

Gunboats should have a similar area of denial as the battleships, only on a smaller sphere. The heavy ones having some power against bigger caps too, better forword guns, that should hurt when aimed properly.

Bombers should kill capitals if they manage to enter the area of denial. So snacs beeing particularly good against gunboats and transports. Novas against the bigger caps. Heavy bombers beeing able to carry both.

Fighters should kill bombers and other fighters naturaly.

SHFs should be a danger to bombers and gunboats too. A snac or double minirazors, with lower power recharging then bombers. And better torpedos dangerous to gunboats.
VHFs fastest killer of bombers, best firepower.
HFs killer of VHFs and bombers lower firepower, better agility.
LFs Interceptors and being able to hold their ground in a fight until they have the opportunity to leave. I don't think light fighters should be unhittable. Only the speedracers should have the insane agility that lfs have now. Those are the true incerceptors.

I still believe that snubs should be more sluggish, with HFs being as agile as VHFs are now. Especially bombers because they have that huge powercore that can fire Snacs and propulsate novas up to 4km away.


This way we would make possibles minigames like: Stop the carrier traverse a system; Destroy the battleship camping a gate; Stop the destroyer from reaching the battleship; Defend the traders convoy by surrounding them with gunboats; Kill the bombers before they kill your capital.

My opinion.

RE: Transport\Capital ship rebalance idea - Govedo13 - 12-27-2013

(12-25-2013, 04:03 PM)Highland Laddie Wrote: # disagree on making transports slower or less maneuverable. Most 5kers are pretty clumsy as-is, and the agility of the medium and small transports is their only advantage, especially since they lack both the firepower and hull strength of their bigger brothers.
Hahha. We play on different servers as it seems.
Behemoth,Claysdale,P-transp,A-transp, some freighters like Camara and several similar ships are severely OPed in 4.87.
Good pilots can solo equal skilled vhfs,bombers and heavy bombers. The said things are not snacable if you does not get less then 150m to them, bomber guns cannot hit them right as well.
If the skill level is different they can kill GBs as well. Bigger transps have 0 chance because of the thrust difference.
On the side of the bigger transps- Single bomber can kill cau8 Stork between the lines only on 3 places in the whole Sirius map. The effective kill distance on Stork by light bomber is more then 30k- and this is if the Stork pilot is dull one, if he is clever and dodge while shoting and steering, combined with the containers that soak up hits it extends to 50k. Having this on the biggest cargo ship is idiotic.
If it is battletransp the bomber can just forget about killing it as well. If it is Clydesdale or Behemoth the bomber must run in order not to get one salvo killed by them.
In groups those have the same effect like GBs except that they can carry cargo and have more hull and bot and bats and are also excluded from the 2 hour dead rule.

(12-26-2013, 07:49 AM)Curios Wrote: It's the result of aiming system calculations being not optimized for such type of movements from beginning and not exactly working properly. The main complaint for not being able to control the ship in turret view was about the controls itself - it was that if you concentrate on turrets you can't turn at all, only strafe side to side and upside down. Now the steering not only gives an ability to turn while in turret view - but more over, effectively evade fire on some ships almost at point blank while constantly firing own weapons. It's gave mechanics abuse and I don't know why it's still that way.
This. Note that this comes from the guy that was able to solo 5 bombers in BS in 4.85.
TS feels so wrong and OP that I haven't bothered to learn turret steering since it makes the game dull.

The whole transport ,freighter, GB and BS classes are totally screwed balance-wise. Only cruisers work like intended now.